Chimer

No experience, but it should be simple enough - a couple of inches of track on the free end of the sector plate for the cassettes to line up against, with guides down the side to ensure alignment ...

Haven't commented for a while, but still watching with avid interest. As Lez says, great to see the overall progress on the countryside, but loving the detail work on bridges etc too. Keep on keeping on!

Yes indeedy. You're on a memory lane trip, so you need to identify which bits (if any) you want to be pretty accurate, as opposed to just giving the right overall feel of the place. Like I'm sure the flying junction is important, but is it essential that the main line is quadruple track? You could halve the number of tracks in the depot and still operate it using the basic principles we've identified. And OK, we've learnt the Hertford line was electrified early in your chosen period, but you could choose to ignore that fact and just use DMUs to provide the service there.

Having done a bit more research, I now understand that Bounds Green depot in it's present form, that we've all been working around, didn't exist in the period you want to model, and there was just a goods yard on the site then, following the closure and demolition of a small steam shed in 1954. The present depot was commissioned in 1977 (steam long gone) to handle HSTs ..... (this is me believing everything I find on the internet, by the way). So if you keep the depot, you really need to move forward in time towards the 80s ..... If you were to scrub the depot, with its huge footprint and requirement for all round access, you could do a pretty whizzy representation of Ally Pally, the flying junction and the two lines heading north in the 60s/70s. And I'm sure it would be possible to incorporate dumbbells without , as you put it, wasting 15 feet of modelling space. With so much space available to begin with, it seems weird that you would even contemplate adding the complexity of a helix (or two!) But you could obviously afford to use generous radii if you did. I found all I needed to know about Bowes Park station and the reversing siding by going to it's Wikipedia entry and following an "external link" to "The History of Bowes Park Railway station". And a search for "Bounds Green Railway Depot" led me to a Flickr page (owned by Adrian Nicholls) with some authoritative-looking info about the depot. I can't copy the links for some reason. But depot or no depot is really the crucial question! The saga continues! I do hope you didn't order all that pointwork ...

As the proposer of the 2' external access corridor, I can state with confidence it's there to make it possible to reach all parts of the layout, given Drew's main aim seemed to be model the depot which he had assessed as needing at least an 8' x 5' board. So not a spectator gallery, but an operational necessity! And once the corridor was there, the obvious place to put storage loops was outside the backscene on that side of the layout, so they could be accessed if required - not envisaging there would be lot of actual fiddling. My mistaken (?) assumption having seen the aerial shots of the depot was that operations would be primarily modern MUs which can happily reverse without fiddling. When Nick provided the info about the use of the siding at Bowes Park, incorporating this as if the line there was just a branch to a suburban terminus was easy enough (and that's what I thought that line was) and made a simple out of sight reversal for local trains adequate. Clearly, given Drew's starting point, it couldn't realistically be done as an alternative main line with varied traffic. Nick has now proposed a totally different overall approach - fair enough. But my general rule when chipping in to these debates is to largely go with the flow of the original idea, not "delete all and insert" ....

That'll do it ...

Sorry, should have said Maps not Earth 🙃

Just search for Bowes Park on Google Earth. There's a 5-car EMU sitting in the siding taking up less than half of it .... it (the siding!) has clearly been there a long time.

Eras 5 / 6 ? 1955 - 1972, Steam/Diesel transition ? I though you were all modern multiple units .... I just know the way I put things together needs that long siding (and not the facing crossover on the branch by the depot access point). But it's your railway ...

You still definitely need a longer siding at Bowes Park! Good luck with the move and the shed build. Chris

I was referencing your very first plan. Your latest is definitely better operationally than yesterday's (imho). You can't do a continuous run anti-clockwise, which might be a bit of a pain. And a stub off the lower fiddleyard siding would be good ..... Fwiw, in my similar layout a pick-up freight spent most of it's life in what I thought of as the "goods loop" at the station, and could gently shunt the yard while passenger traffic continued back and forth via the platform road. Occasionally it would depart, do a circuit or two and end up back in the loop to be resorted in accordance with the luck of a deal of cards. Which is only really possible if the goods loop is on the same side as the yard. You are very tight for space "north/south", so I don't know if this is an option for you, I haven't got TT track loaded to see what's possible. I can see the attraction of having the double track to the right of the station, but suspect it's adding constraints that you might do better without.

The Anyrail plan in the very first post in the thread.

In haste ..... You can't get anything into the two sidings at the refinery / oil depot without a run round. Just a single through loop off the main could work - somewhere to hold a short tanker train which occasionally has a run round the down main. Also, I should have noticed earlier, the reversing siding beyond Bowes Park has to be long enough to take the longest MU rake you want to get into the depot, so at least 4 feet I reckon. And I can't think of anything you could do with that extra siding off the down branch, so I wouldn't bother! On a completely different point, does all that green mean you're going to set the whole thing in rolling countryside?

The beauty of the fiddle yard arrangement in the very first plan (which I have used myself) was that you could run a train from one FY siding to the other, then bring another loco off the stub siding to take it away again, with the original train loco moving to the stub. So 3 locos involved altogether in running a service back and forth, with the locos always reappearing from where you'd expect them to be. Now, having double-tracked the line on the right hand side, there's no way the stock from an arrival in the inner fiddle yard siding can access the correct (outer) track for the next journey. And (compared with the first plan) nowhere as convenient for the second loco to sit while waiting it's turn.

Yep, have to admit freight services on the branch would be very tricky (unless with a loco on each end?) .... a couple of freights could lurk in the slow FY loops and make occasional appearances on the main, extra loops could be added if necessary.

Wow you're getting quick with that drawing package! The only thing I can see that I think you've missed is the ability to reverse trains in the main FY - here's a closeup of the pointwork in my version, the points you've missed out are in pink ... they're all curved ones to fit round the bend ...

I'm suggesting a backscene (thick green line) with Buckingham Road at high level in front and the lines behind out in the open where they can be seen and got at by the operator when necessary, but aren't seen usually while just "watching the trains go by". The dotted tracks are the only ones that will actually be under scenery. A slightly narrower baseboard down that side might make reaching easier. Same at the right hand side, with just short tunnelled sections as far as the backscene and the FY all out in the open (but accessible there from the outside of course, rather than by reaching over).

Well I hope you think this is worth the wait ....... it's been an interesting exercise trying to produce something that captures the essence of an actual place, with (nearly) enough room to do it justice. So what's different from what you've got already / what I did before looking at Google earth? And why .... As I said, I don't think I can improve on your ideas for the depot, so I've just left spurs for the approach lines. Might play with it for my own satisfaction later ... Most importantly, I've made more of a feature of the branch line, incorporating Bowes Park (BP) and the siding which allows access to the depot (as described earlier by @Nick Holliday). So empty stock from Kings Cross (KX) to the depot comes through Alexandra Palace (AP) on the down branch, over the flyover, through BP into the siding, reverses and accesses the depot from the up branch. Empty stock to KX uses the AP bypass and joins the up lines to KX somewhere to the south. No need for a crossover to access the depot from the down branch. Branch passenger traffic continues beyond BP and disappears into a tunnel on its way to Hertford (?) represented by a 3 road dead-end fiddle yard (1 road might be enough if everything using that line looks the same). I thought this was preferable to linking it back into the main line with a double junction, given that the down line would have needed 3 diamonds to get across to where it needed to be. I've taken the minor liberty (!) of moving the Buckingham Road bridge to the other end of AP station to act as a view blocker for the most unprototypical arrangement of tracks down the left hand side. Hopefully there's enough visible railway round the other three sides for you to be happy for the spectator to lose sight of the railway here (the operator can obviously still see and reach over the top to sort out any issues). I've added a siding off the down slow at AP because I felt I needed the down branch to start rising before the north end of the main line platforms. Starting the rise opposite the buffer stop means a 1.2% (~1 in 80) gradient to the flyover. Using the same gradient down the other side gets you back to ground zero just before BP (elevated track shown in pink). If you're happier with steeper gradients you can obviously shorten the incline lengths. Turning to the main line, the top end of the main fiddle yard is clearly "The North" so the other end must be KX. Therefore the 4 track main along the bottom is part of the run from KX to AP, so I've labelled a mini-station here as Hornsey to make this clear. It looks nothing like the real thing and its geographical relationship to BP is obviously seriously weird, so you might well want to do without it - however ...... The crossovers between the fast and slow lines either side of "Hornsey", and either side of AP, which don't exist in real life are needed in your world to allow you to switch stock between the lines. There are no crossovers between up and down lines, but the centre two lines in the FY are bi-directional, so traffic entering the FY area on the fast lines can reverse and emerge going in the other direction on the correct line. Slow line traffic therefore needs to use the visible crossovers to shift to fast before entering the FY. It might have been tidier to move the crossovers into the hidden FY area, but that would have taken many more hours of playing around to try to make it all fit! The slow - gap - fast - fast - gap - slow arrangement of the main lines through AP tries to represent the real thing as seen on Google Earth. Through "Hornsey" I've used the more conventional (I think?) slow - fast - gap -fast - slow but this is clearly just a matter of taste and preference! And finally (!) - I've just realised your plan for the shed has grown 2 feet since I started work - which would give a nice bit of extra room (and ease the gradient I was worried about). But I'm not starting again now .... 🤪 Cheers, Chris

You're running way ahead of me now. Now you've given yourself a bit more space for the depot, I don't think I could improve it much, though I might reduce the number of roads - I assume you've done it using a planning package so it works, but those fans of points look horribly cramped! What I can offer is some ideas on how to make it operable - and a different approach to the overall scheme. More tomorrow (hopefully) Chris

My next contribution will be a couple of days away yet (other life intruding!) For info I have taken @Harlequin's point about bringing the up and down branch lines together so have scrubbed the second flyover, and following @Nick Holliday's explanation am also featuring Bowes Park station and the siding where empty MUs reverse before accessing the depot. I am also currently trying to get closer to the actual Ally Pally station arrangements (thanks @ISW) but may give up on that in favour of the heavily simplified version I first suggested before looking at the real thing. I would also add my voice to those cautioning a pause before committing a huge sum on points. And recognising that the Bounds Green depot is the main feature of the layout, I assume you have worked out how many MU sets you will need to purchase to make it look half-way realistic? Finally, although I agree with @njee20 that you have "bags of space", I'm still struggling to find the room to get the down branch line up and over the main without using 1 in 50 gradients! Cheers, Chris

Better, with the terminal roads below the through lines. Still need to ditch the redundant line from top left back to the station throat, and the crossover between the circuits top left hasn't any useful function either. All you need up there is the one turnout from the outer circuit into the storage loops.

I'll keep working on it then, incorporating some good thoughts / ideas from @Harlequin, @ISW and @Nick Holliday. Just give me a couple of days ..... I'm more than happy to send you the source file if you PM me with your email address, but as it's drawn in XTrackCad with 00 track it might not be a lot of use to you! Cheers, Chris

Supplementary questions (having looked at Google Earth) - is the 4 track main line paired by speed or direction? And what is the function of the middle line without a platform face? I just can't work out what's going on here!

Does this get anywhere near what you're after? I can do some more work on it and explain my thinking if you're interested. I've drawn it using Streamline 00 but the squares are 12" in N .....

I think there's a 2' walkway above and to the right of the plan ...